Inmate forced to give birth in a toilet; CCA prisons being sued for widespread abuse

Inmate forced to give birth in a toilet; CCA prisons being sued for widespread abuse

By Your Black World

Complaints of abuse, neglect and fraud in the way Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) handles issues within America’s prison system has caused them to lose four prison contracts recently.

According to reports, CCA has turned Idaho’s largest state prison into what has been referred to by inmates as “Gladiator School.”

The state of Idaho has now cut ties with CCA after reports of understaffing at its prison and the use of gangs to control other inmates.

Apparently, in order to get more money from the state, CCA falsified security staffing hours and claimed for almost 4,800 hours of security detail work that had not been done.

CCA reportedly submitted false paperwork to the state in order to receive compensation, which showed that the same security guards had worked for two or three days without a break.

Another two prisons in Texas that are also under the control of CCA have been closed due to reports of suspicious deaths of inmates. At one of the prisons, a woman had to give birth to a baby in a prison toilet because the prison staff ignored her pleas for help. The baby died after four days.

Mississippi also kicked CCA out of their prisons because of a series of deadly riots, lack of prison sanitation and medical care, abuse by the guards and atrocious food given to the in-mates.

However, MTC, the company that Mississippi has chosen to take over the CCA contract, also ran another prison which has the highest reports of inmate assaults in the entire state.

CCA is not the first private company to be booted out in Mississippi. The state also got rid of the GEO Group when it was found guilty of turning a youth detention facility into a “cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts.”

Even with all this, the state of Mississippi is still not about to give up on private prisons completely.

This is not the first time that CCA has landed in hot water over their control of private prisons. There are lawsuits filed against the CCA in every state in which they operate.

In Colorado, a lawsuit over prison abuses was settled by CCA paying $600,000 in compensation. In Ohio, CCA has failed several audits of its books because of filthy and overcrowded facilities.

Those in favor of private prisons say that it will help states who don’t have the money to run state prisons. However, far from saving these states money, some private prisons, including those run by CCA, have been caught overcharging states by millions of dollars.

CCA seems to have made a killing from the prison industry. In 2000, CCA was on the brink of bankruptcy, but has reportedly netted profits in excess $162 million in 2011 alone. Incarceration is becoming a path to wealth for shareholders in this company.